The celebration of the anniversaries of three revolutionary events that have shaped the social and political outlook of the world affords a welcome excuse to take a close look at some of the assumptions on which our social and political system is based. Two of these events mark the triumph over an internal tyrannical régime: the reforms of Cleisthenes of about 508 B.C.E., which laid the groundwork for Athenian democracy, and the Déclaration des droits de l’homme et du citoyen, adopted by the French Assembly in 1789. The American Declaration of Independence of 1776, followed in 1789 by the Constitution...

Ἦ δὴ ὅ τε οὐρανὸς ἔνερθε ἔσται τῆς γῆς καὶ ἡ γῆ μετέωρος ὑπὲρ τοῦ ούρανοῦ, καὶ ἄνθρωποι νομὸν έν θαλάσσῃ ἕξουσι καὶ ἰχθύες τὸν πρότερον ἄνθρωποι ὅτε γε ύμεῖς, ὦ Λακεδαιμόνιοι, ἰσοκρατίας καταλύοντες τυραννίδας ἐς τὰς πόλις κατάγειν παρασκευάζεσθε, τοῦ οὔτε ἀδικώτερόν ἐστι οὐδὲν κατ᾽ ἀνθρώπους οὔτε μιαιφονώτερον.¹ With these spirited words the Corinthian Socles opened, according to Herodotus, his attack on a Spartan proposal, made before the earliest known formal meeting of the Peloponnesian League,² convened at Sparta shortly after the young Athenian democracy had weathered a three-pronged attack upon its existence by the Peloponnesians, Boeotians, and Chalcidians.³...

It is one of the frustrations of the historian of ancient Greece that we know so little about the internal functioning of the Greek city-states in the classical period. We have, to be sure, plenty of information on the operation of the Athenian democracy; still, we know neither how typical the Athenian model was for other democracies, nor how widespread democracy was elsewhere in the Greek world. The situation is considerably worse in the case of oligarchies. Even though it is possible that they were much more numerous in the classical Greek world than democracies, the lack of coherent literary...

The excellent discussion of the Samian Revolt and its aftermath by Graham Shipley contains little on the internal political developments in Samos and especially on the role played by autonomia in her relations with Athens.¹ The relevance of this question to the role of ideology in Athenian control over her allies makes a new investigation worthwhile. Following Aristotle’s advice to proceed from the known to the unknown, I shall begin in midstream rather than at the beginning. Thucydides’ account of domestic events in Samos in 412 B.C.E. runs as follows:

About this time, too, there occurred in Samos the insurrection...

Among the few generalizations that one can safely make about the ancient Greeks as well as about us moderns is that none of us, with the exception of some certified lunatics, loves war for its own sake and prefers it to peace. But when it comes to the question of what war is and why human nature is susceptible to it, there are rather profound differences between their perceptions and ours. The best way to observe these differences is to raise a question that is probably most central to our thinking about war and peace: is war a necessary evil...

Few fragments of Greek poetry have been cited in ancient literature as frequently as Pindar’s poem on νόμος βασιλεύς.¹ From its earliest mention, perhaps still within Pindar’s own lifetime and certainly not long after his death, at the end of Herodotus’ story about Darius’ experiment with the Indians and Greeks concerning their respective funeral customs² down to the entry “νóμος ὁ πάντων βασιλεύς” in Hesychius’ lexicon in the fifth century of our era, there are no less than twenty-two references to it,³ and the manner in which many of these are made suggests that the beginning of the poem may...

Written legislation began in Athens, if we can trust Aristotle’s statement in his Constitution of Athens 41.2, with Draco, even though before Draco ϑέσμια of some kind were kept in writing by the ϑεσμοϑέται (ibid.,3.4). Draco and Solon, whose written code formed the basis of the Athenian legal system for at least the next three centuries, called their statutes ϑεσμοί, a term which was displaced in the sense of a “written statute” by νόμος at some point before the middle of the fifth century B.C.¹ Yet it is not until 425 B.C., the beginning of the last quarter of fifth...

The central importance of Antiphon, the author of the tract On Truth, for students of philosophy and history alike, needs no argument. Not only is he the earliest Athenian sophist intelligible to us, but he is also the most explicit exponent of the nomos-physis controversy which emerged in Athens in the 420s and was to prove seminal in the development of Western thought; for the historian, its author presents the tantalizing problem whether he is or is not identical with the politician who, according to Thucydides (8.68.1), orchestrated the oligarchical revolution of 411. Moreover, the publication in 1984 of a...

Allow me to begin with a quotation: “The rule of the masses has, to start with, the fairest name of all, political equality, and further it does none of the things a monarch does: it appoints offi cials by lot, its rule is answerable, and it refers all political resolutions to the community.”¹

This, the earliest definition of “democracy” that has come down to us, is placed by Herodotus not into the mouth of a Greek, but into that of a Persian who had participated in the overthrow of a monarchical regime and was now deliberating with his fellow conspirators...

To run a government costs, and as taxpayers we all know too well who foots the bill. The taxes we pay are meant to defray two kinds of expenses: expenses in goods and recompense for public service. In wartime not only does the military need arms, equipment, and food supplies but we must also compensate the members of the armed forces for the loss of personal earnings which they need to support themselves and their families. In peacetime public expenditures pay for the materials and services required for constructing roads and public buildings and for compensating public officials for their...

The title of this paper gives us one of the only two facts known about the man to whom Thucydides assigns one of the most profound and important speeches in his History. The other fact is that the speech reported by Thucydides was not Diodotus’ first on Cleon’s motion in the summer of 427 B.C., that all adult male Mytileneans be killed and their women and children be taken as slaves: he had been the most vociferous opponent of that motion already a day earlier when it had been successfully passed by the Athenian Assembly.¹

To try to identify Diodotus...

Thucydides reports that a revolt of Euboea followed hard upon the heels of the Athenian withdrawal from Boeotia after their defeat at Coroneia in 447/6 B.C.E.¹ The immediate cause of this revolt is not stated, but it can be inferred with some confidence from the context in which it took place. Thucydides’ statement that Euboean exiles had helped the Boeotians in resisting Athenian inroads (Thuc. 1.113.2) suggests that already before Coroneia internal divisions had created a group of Euboean exiles, who had made common cause with the Boeotians and their allies.² It is likely that their success in boeotia encouraged...

Aristotle tells us at Athenaion Politeia 25.1—I shall persist in calling the work Aristotle’s more for the sake of convenience than out of conviction that I know who its author was—that “for approximately seventeen years after the Persian Wars the constitution lasted under the leadership of the Areopagites, although it was gradually declining.”¹ This passage has to be taken in close conjunction with 23.1, which explains the dominance of the Areopagus after the Persian Wars: “So at this time (sc. on the eve of Salamis) the city had progressed to this point, gradually gaining in power with the...

By the middle of the fifth century B.C.E. Athens had fully developed a democracy. Democracy thrives—or is supposed to thrive—on discussion, and of that there was plenty in fifth-century Athens. Persuasive speaking was needed in the Athenian democracy to get legislation through Council and Assembly, and the verdict of large lay-juries depended on the skill with which arguments for conviction or acquittal were presented by prosecution and defense. That popular law courts could be used for political ends at the euthynai to which elected officials were regularly subjected upon the expiration of their terms of office had been...

“Because of the greatness of our city there is an influx of all things from the entire world, with the result that the enjoyment of goods produced at home is no more familiar to us than the produce of other men” (Thuc.2.38.2). Pericles’ words, as recorded in the Funeral Oration Thucydides attributes to him, are often taken as characterizing the age over which he presided. There are good reasons in abundance for doing so. But they can be faulted for an egregious omission: the influx of the material goods and the prosperity they signal also brought to Athens an...

In an age which assumes that the biography of an author is indispensable for an understanding of his work, it is refreshing to find Thucydides obliging the reader by supplying all the information on his own life that he considers relevant for this purpose. What he volunteers is, from our point of view, sparse. It is confined to his opening statement (1.1.1) that he was an Athenian and began writing on the Peloponnesian War as soon as it it broke out in 431 B.C.E.; that he lived to see its end, that he was mature enough at the time to...